North Bengal's first Covid-19 patient's 20 contacts in quarantine

The administration has identified around 20 people, including two doctors, who came in close contact with the first Covid-19 patient from north Bengal and asked them to quarantine themselves at home.

The National Institute of Cholera & Enteric Diseases (Niced) in Calcutta had on Saturday confirmed that a 44-year-old Kalimpong woman had the novel coronavirus. She is being treated at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri.

Police said around 14 people in Kalimpong, including the patient’s family members, relatives and employees of the business establishments run by her family in the hill town, had been asked to be in home quarantine.

“In Siliguri, she had been to a relative’s house at Jyotinagar. Five or six people, including her husband, were at the house. All of them have been put in home quarantine,” an official at the hospital said.

The police are trying to find out who else had come in contact with the patient after she had returned from Chennai on March 19. Efforts are also on to trace passengers on the flight she took to Bagdogra that day.

Sources have said the woman’s family owns another property, probably a flat on Pranami Mandir Road in Siliguri. The police visited the site and are in touch with housekeeping staff to know whether any member of the family was there in the past few days.

“If it is found that some one had been there, the staff would be asked to be in home quarantine, too,” a source said.

The Kalimpong woman had gone to Chennai for her daughter’s treatment on March 7. Both returned on March 19 and after touching down at Bagdogra, they travelled in their own car and went to the relative’s house in Jyotinagar.

They stayed there for some time and then left for Kalimpong. She visited a local doctor on March 20 and again on March 25 as she was having dry cough. On March 26, she and her husband went to the relative’s house in Siliguri again. The same day she got herself examined by another doctor and was admitted to North Bengal Medical College.

The two doctors, one in Kalimpong and the other in Siliguri, and the patient’s daughter are among those who have gone into home quarantine.

“I had checked her on March 20. I was wearing a mask, gloves and apron that day,” the Kalimpong doctor said. “She again came to me on March 25 and said the dry cough was persisting.”

The Sikkim government has found out that at least six people from the state were on the flight that the Covid-19 patient had taken.

“We are trying to track down all of them. Once it is done, they will be asked to be in self-quarantine,” said a source in the Sikkim government.

https://www.telegraphindia.com